I'm really looking forward to How to Train Your Dragon 2. I pretty much ignored the first one until the kids were watching it and it sucked me in. One of the most compelling components was the obvious research that was done in non-human (mostly dog) social interactions. The dragons behave like real animals. Highly intelligent, flying, fire breathing reptiloids, sure, but their actions, from gaze avoidance, to dominance displays, to food behavior, all felt real. Rather than pulling you out, it pulled you in.

Now here's the teaser for the new movie.

I know I'm being a stickler, and they obviously put just as much work into the animation of the characters as in the previous film, but they missed out on the clouds. At one point, toothless is whistling right over the cloud deck at insane speeds, and it's like he's moving through vacuum. Not i single wisp is perturbed by his passage. They can pass into, out of, and over the clouds without a single vortex.

I'm know I'm being a stickler, and I know I'm supposed to suspend belief, but this is a preconscious problem. I know intuitively that when something goes by fast, there's a wind. I've seen too many carefully choreographed scenes of the smoky vortices coming off of wing tips and helicopter blades. When it's not there, I looks wrong before I even know what's making it wrong, and I'm pulled out of the story to figure it out. Imagine if the animators occasionally forgot to put the characters feet on the ground. You could force yourself to ignore it, but only after you've been pulled out of the story and made the conscious decision to do so.

Ok. I'm a stickler, and I'll still enjoy the movie, and I'm guessing the little guy will also.